


sing me to sleep

by sungmemoonstruck



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cosette's POV, F/M, Friendship, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 23:19:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sungmemoonstruck/pseuds/sungmemoonstruck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, when Cosette can’t sleep, she spends hours watching over the people she loves.</p><p>(It’s not as creepy as it sounds.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	sing me to sleep

Sometimes, when Cosette can’t sleep, she spends hours watching over the people she loves.

(It’s not as creepy as it sounds.)

Marius is adorable when he sleeps. He crinkles his nose and snores a bit, which would be slightly irritating if it weren’t for the fact that he actually _tries_ not to snore as he drifts off, just for her sake. Every night, it’s a fruitless attempt, she can tell when he’s trying just so hard and it’s positively one of the sweetest gestures anyone has ever done for her. She runs her fingers through his hair and presses her lips to the corner of his eyes, every so often catching her name in the whispers of his dreams. She melts.

Éponine sleeps like a cat. In their shared dorm, she and Cosette will stay up for what feels like millennia, talking about their days or their futures or their family or their friends, or any other little thing in between. When they finally give into sleep, Éponine curls into a ball beneath the covers and is out like a light, but somehow she’s as alert as she would be if she were conscious—more often than not had she sprung into action whenever Cosette made the mistake of running into things to grab a glass of water. Sometimes when Éponine has terrible nightmares and cries out in the middle of the night, Cosette crawls into bed with her and wraps her arms around her, hushing her to sleep. Éponine’s extreme night defenses never react to moments like those, and Éponine’s kind enough to do the same for Cosette whenever she has nightmares of her own.

(Sometimes Gavroche stays with them. Gavroche sleeps like any child would—adamant about staying up all night, only to pass out five minutes later. Éponine lets him sleep in her bed, and she looks more relaxed with him there, less alert and more like the young girl she really was. Cosette makes sure to put the covers back on them when they both inevitably kick them off.)

When Grantaire sleeps, it’s like watching waves calm after a storm. They, too, stay up for ages, chatting about everything imaginable and giggling, but her relationship with Grantaire is a unique kind of love, and sometimes they simply curl into each other, holding each other’s faces and tangling fingers in hair and resting foreheads against one another, silent but saying so much all at the same time. Grantaire falls asleep slowly, sometimes as if he’s trying to fight against it, but when he’s finally under he looks at peace, almost happy, and her heart warms at the sight of it. She traces invisible replicas of his artwork onto his skin and holds him close, dozing off with her hand in his. The touch is comforting to them both.

Enjolras sleeps with a strange sort of determination, which almost wouldn’t make any sense at all if it weren’t for the fact that this was Enjolras and Enjolras had the tendency to attempt at defying odds. She finds him a curious specimen to watch: his eyes are shut, but there’s something very resolute about them even still, as if the fire behind them can’t be put out even for a few hours of relaxation—yet at the same time, he looks as peaceful as Grantaire and younger than ever. There are some moments when the Apollo in him reflects in his dreams, and other moments when he’s nothing more than a student, just a boy. He radiates light in the dark, and when Cosette finds herself picturing him as a nightlight, she has to cover her mouth to keep her laughter subdued.

Combeferre always sleeps with his glasses on. He’s the quietest of them all and he often looks as if he’s not actually asleep, but merely thinking about something quite deeply instead. Cosette wonders what kinds of dreams a man like him could have, a man whose knowledge rivals the best of the best—would his imagination be as unlimited as his wisdom? When she watches him, she thinks she might give anything to know, but Combeferre’s face never betrays a thing.

As the hours roll by, his glasses become more skewed. She slides them off and folds them onto the coffee table so they don’t get damaged.

Courfeyrac sleeps like he lives—animatedly. If he’s not tucked beneath Jehan’s chin, then he’s sprawled out across the floor or the couch, limbs hanging every which way. He doesn’t snore, but his mutterings are more than enough to match anyone’s snoring. He holds Jehan or his pillow close and whispers sweet-nothings into their gentle ears (Jehan is usually the more receptive of the two), or talks of adventures that haven’t happened in the real world. Whereas Cosette knows nothing of Combeferre’s dreams, she knows _too much_ about Courfeyrac’s.

When he gets too loud, Cosette just nudges him with a bit more loving force than necessary till he quiets down.

Jehan sleeps like a whisper. He undoes his braid just before bed, so when he’s lying on his pillow, his hair fans out in curls, and the flowers in his locks simply float around him. He likes to sleep with one leg sticking out from beneath the covers, and before he and Courfeyrac got together, he always needed something to hold, whether it was a pillow or a person or a blanket (he was a world-renowned blanket-hog, as Courfeyrac would sweetly jest). He and Courfeyrac become a web of arms and legs in the night, and when Courfeyrac whispers those sweet-nothings into his ear, Jehan recites poetry into Courfeyrac’s hair, speaking words of beauty that Cosette loves to listen to.

Joly sighs a lot in his sleep. It’s rhythmic and has almost become somewhat of a comfort to Cosette—she worries when he doesn’t sigh as much or at all, and will sit up and lean over to make sure he’s alright; the smile on his face, ever-present as he naps, is the only thing to make her feel better. There hasn’t been a moment when she hasn’t seen him smile in his sleep and she thinks that she’d rather not see a moment when it’s not there. He sleeps on Musichetta’s right side, lacing his fingers with hers and Bossuet’s, and sighs till sunlight pours in through the window, brightening his expression of pure bliss.

Musichetta sleeps with love. There’s no other way to describe it—she simply radiates love. She lies between Bossuet and Joly, cradling them in her arms, save for the times when she’s turned on her side and they cradle her. When that happens, she likes to rest her forehead against one of theirs and grip the other’s arm around her waist like an anchor. On a rare occasion, Cosette gets the chance to watch Musichetta slowly wake, and when she does, she peppers her boys with kisses on their shoulders, murmuring her greetings and words of love before untangling herself to go make the first pot of coffee.

When Bossuet sleeps, he’s bright, practically beaming. Cosette doesn’t know what it is that makes him so happy—a combination of warmth and Musichetta and Joly and just the perfect serenity of the night, she figures—but it’s positively darling to watch. He often needs a pillow between his knees and he likes to have the window open just a little, so he can hear the sounds of Paris below. When Musichetta has already woken and heads into the kitchen, Bossuet pulls Joly into him, placing a light, groggy kiss on his nose before humming himself back to sleep again.

Feuilly never has time for that period in between consciousness and slumber—when he lies down, he is _out_. He’s like Éponine, in that he can curl up in any space and sleep safe and sound there, but his sleep defenses are nearly non-existent; she’s tripped near him, over him, on top of him, and he never wakes once. He used to snore and was considerate enough to try to muffle the sound with his arm or by burying his face into the pillow, but that never really helped, and after a little while—thanks to sleep apnea—he’d wake up choking for air. Now he wears a mask attached to a machine of water and tubes and sleeps perfectly sound.

Sometimes while Cosette looks around at all her friends, she catches his glinting eye, and he winks at her before adjusting his mask and falling into heavy unconsciousness.

Bahorel sleeps loudly. He lies out like a starfish, and when he rolls over, he tends to slap those in close vicinity, which is why everyone but Feuilly chooses to stay at arm’s length.

Once, for Christmas, he gave everyone a pair of ear plugs as an apology for snoring the loudest and the proudest, but Cosette has yet to where hers—she’s gotten far too used to the noises the night makes.

She watches him with amusement while he rests, for he can’t sleep without about ten blankets and a haggard old plush bunny that his sister had given to him as a child. When he tosses and turns so much that the bunny’s slid out of his reach, Cosette wriggles out of Marius’ arms and carries the toy back to Bahorel, tucking it under his chin, stifling a giggle as he clutches it with all his might.

Cosette doesn’t know why she likes watching her friends sleep. She can’t explain the elation she feels as she gazes down on this maddening, wonderful group of people; she just knows that it happens and the emotion is warm and dizzying and it makes her feel as happy as Joly often seems. Sometimes she feels like she’s watching over them to guard them, to keep them away from the wear and tear of a world that tries so hard to wear and tear them down in daylight—other times she feels like she’s breaking some sort of rule, like she’s peeking into her friends’ worlds without their knowing and finding out all of the things they’d hidden away.

When she told Grantaire her secret, he had grinned and told her that it was lovely and so very much like her to do such a thing.

Cosette doesn’t sleep much. She and Éponine have a shared past that haunts them, and even though Cosette has learned that the world was so much more than what she had once known, there are times when she can’t give herself over to her slumber just yet. So she watches her friends and listens, to their breathing and whispers, their humming and sighing, their snoring and the gentle whir of machines.

She watches and guards them.

She watches and learns more about them with every passing second.

She watches and feels more than joy—she feels unyielding, unwavering, Jehan’s poetry and Musichetta’s aura, over-the-moon love.

At last, she can settle herself on the floor in the center of her family, her hand clasped within Grantaire’s and Marius’ arms wrapped firmly around her waist.

And she sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is actually quite ironic, as it kept me from sleeping for several hours.
> 
> My tumblr is manicpixiedreamfedora.tumblr.com
> 
> Thanks for reading :)


End file.
